DistroWatch Weekly

A weekly opinion column and a summary of events from the distribution world

DistroWatch Weekly

DistroWatch Weekly, Issue 90, 7 March 2005

Welcome to this year's 10th issue of DistroWatch Weekly! This week we will tell you about a secret meeting of Debian developers in Vancouver where they were to unveil their "Stunning New Release Strategy", give you a link to a valuable resource that will turn you into a better system administrator of Debian-based systems and direct you to a great new HOWTO to configure multimedia on SUSE LINUX. Also, a surprise for fans of the amaroK media player - a new PCLinuxOS-based live CD, bundled with some great free music. Enjoy!

It seems that the Debian developers can no longer bear the criticism of the community and media for not having produced a stable Debian release in over 2.5 years and are finally springing into action. They gathered in Vancouver last weekend to discuss what needs to be done to declare Sarge stable and even to look ahead at the post-Sarge release process: "Andreas Schuldei has helpfully secured sponsorship from NUUGF to bring the release team together with several ftp masters, buildd maintainers, and a few other stakeholders in the release process for a physical meeting to work out whatever needs to be worked out to get sarge out the door, and to begin preparations for a timely release of etch. ... More (much more) information will be available after the weekend, when we'll be able to present our Stunning New Release Strategy <tm> to the rest of the project." Read more in this mailing list post.

* * * * *

Still on the subject of Debian GNU/Linux, a reader has sent us a link to a new resource for Debian system administrators. Called Debian-Administration.org, this web site is "a simple weblog which is designed to contain interesting and useful information related to the system administration of Debian GNU/Linux systems. It is not an official part of the Debian project, instead, it is an independent community portal." Despite being a new web site, Debian-Administration.org contains a number of interesting tips and tricks that should be of interest to anybody running Debian or a Debian-based Linux distribution. Certainly a good resource worth bookmarking.

* * * * *

What do you do if, after installing SUSE LINUX, you discover that you cannot play any of the common multimedia files? Simple, follow the instructions in this step-by-step HOWTO, as published by Mad Penguin: "SUSE LINUX is one of the better desktop Linux distributions on the market today, providing a functional and aesthetically pleasing environment for the new Linux user as well as seasoned veterans. One thing that puzzles many users is the lack of proper multimedia support in SUSE. The developers have basically crippled it from playing virtually all types of multimedia content that's common on the Internet today. This can be a frustrating dilemma for new users, so I have written a short HOWTO to help you get everything in order on your new desktop."

amaroK Live - a new approach to a live CD(contributed by Greg Meyer)

A reader has sent us news about an interesting new distribution called amaroK Live.

"Based on PCLinuxOS, it is not so much a live CD distribution as it is a demonstration and an extension of the operating system into a specific use. It is a stripped down live CD with a fully functional amaroK music player bundled with the tracks commissioned last year by Wired Magazine, which are distributed under the Creative Commons Sampling Licenses. It includes - among other major artists - tracks by the Beastie Boys and David Byrne.

I thought this might be of interest to your readers at several levels. One, it is applications like amaroK that will eventually convince users of MS Windows to make a switch to a *nix system. For most people it is not about the OS but about the applications that are available to use on it. Two, We plan on keeping it up to date with every new amaroK release, so it will stay current and I guess could be called a distribution unto itself. Three, it is an interesting extension of the project started by the Creative Commons licensing technique, which includes many of the principles embodied in free software.

Additionally, this is a way to expose more people to PCLinuxOS, so a project could use a demonstration CD like this to try to market a distribution. This particular live CD leaves the PCLinuxOS installer intact, so one could run the installer and then connect to Texstar's Ibiblio.org repository and update to the latest and greatest version of everything.

amaroK is a next generation media player written for the KDE user environment, but lot's of people use it in XFCE or GNOME because it supports gstreamer as the playback engine and is not heavily dependant on all of KDE. There is more info about amaroK available here and more info about amaroK Live here."

GNIX-Vivo is a Linux live CD designed for the speakers of Galician, a regional language in the Galicia province in Spain. A new version of the distribution was released over the weekend - it is version 0.8.22, which has many corrections, bug fixes, and package updates. The development of GNIX-Vivo is led by Pedro Silva and many volunteers who contribute to the project. Work has already started on a new version, which will be more modular and will be released as a live DVD with a larger package set. More information about the release is available in the release announcement (in Galician).

Pie Box Enterprise Linux 4 AS

Pie Box Enterprise Linux 4 AS has been released: "PixExcel today released version 4 of its Pie Box Enterprise Linux product. Pie Box Enterprise Linux 4 AS is built from the source RPMs of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4 AS. The only packages modified are 'redhat-logos', 'redhat-artwork', 'anaconda-product' and 'firstboot'. These packages are changed in order to remove Red Hat's trademarks from all artwork and to skip the RHN registration step immediately after installation. All other packages remain unchanged from those released by Red Hat and there are no packages added or removed. This results in a product that is fully compatible with Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4. Features of Pie Box Enterprise Linux 4 AS include the Linux 2.6 kernel, SELinux, GNOME 2.8, Samba 3.0, Logical Volume Manager 2, PCI Express support and NFSv.4." The press release.

ParallelKnoppix 2005-03-01

A new version of ParallelKnoppix has been released. From the changelog: "Allows up to 200 nodes. R, with MPI and clustering packages added. I'd appreciate hearing about tests of PVM and the R SNOW and R MPI packages. Tutorial now explains how to use the GUI re-master scripts for easy addition of packages and/or personal files. It is possible to create a personalized CD/DVD without rebooting, if you have a CD/DVD burner in addition to the CD drive you boot from. Octave updated to 2.1.66, since we have a Makefile.env for MPITB that works with Debian unstable - thanks Thomas Weber!" Find more information on the distribution's home page.

Peanut Linux 12.1

This is an updated version of the recently released Peanut Linux 12.0. What's new? "12.1 is out. Same packages... but with some spice added: RPM dependencies - fixed; some software updates - gaim-vv, etc; apt-get/synaptic - lets you get the files you want from the main Peanut repository (pnut project inspired); aptitude - console based synaptic like frontend for apt (modified for use with Peanut from Debian source); updated installpkg and removepkg scripts; CD now boots from peanut.sfs directly instead of peanut.gz (for those with two CDROMs, we're trying to find how to go about with it, so just disable your first CDROM for the moment); F-prot antivirus - for cleaning those viruses in Windows!" Here is the release announcement.

CentOS 4.0 has been released: "The CentOS team is pleased to announce availability of CentOS 4.0 i386 (ia32). This product supports i586 and i686 processors, including all compatible platforms. Major new features include the Linux 2.6 Kernel, SELinux, udev replacing the /dev system, X.Org, MySQL4, CyrusIMAPd, GNOME 2.8 and KDE 3.3. These improvements along with many more are detailed in the release notes available online." Here is the full release announcement.

Monoppix 1.0

Monoppix is a live CD Linux distribution based on Knoppix. Its main purpose is to showcase and spread the Mono technology, which is a free .NET framework implementation to Linux/UNIX operating systems. The CD includes Mono runtime environment, compiler and class libraries, Mono-enabled Integrated Development Environment, ASP.net web server, MySQL database, and Quickstarts and Mono tutorials. Monoppix 1.0 was released today: "What's new in this release: MySQL support, including the ByteFX ADO.NET managed provider (XSP sample included, uses compiled codebehind); XSP code runs in ramdisk, GTK# for desktop applications (sample included)...." Visit the distribution's web site for further information.

grml 0.3

The grml distribution is a bootable CD based on Knoppix and Debian with collection of GNU/Linux software especially for users of texttools and system administrators. It provides automatic hardware detection and it can be used as a rescue system or for analysing systems and networks. Version 0.3 was released today: "Release 0.3 - code name 'Hustenstopper'. Fixed several bugs. Improved hardware detection. Several improved, updated and extended configuration files. Special new features: use of udev (Linux configurable dynamic device naming support); multitail running on tty12; grml-templates: this package includes several templates for use with LaTeX, C, C++, Qt, tpp, Makefile,...; showing cpu-status inside GNU screen." More details are available in the release announcement.

LinEspa 0.30

LinEspa is a Knoppix-based live CD optimised for Spanish and Latin American users and featuring the XFce desktop. Version 0.30 was released today. Changes and improvements include the following: graphical interface XFce 4.2.0; Mozilla Firefox 1.0.1 in Spanish; new menu for accessing applications; problems with NVIDIA graphics cards fixed; OpenOffice.org updated and pre-installed with a Spanish dictionary and spell checker; graphical boot splash (when booting from hard disk); support for ACPI; support for Windows networks from a new archive manager in XFce; option to install the live CD in text mode; support for Intel and Prism2 WiFi cards; new manager of WiFi networks (Linespa GUIFI).... Find more information in the release announcement (in Spanish).

Knopperdisk 0.3.0

Knopperdisk 0.3.0 has been released: "Here it is, Knopperdisk 0.3.0! Thanks to some people on the gentoo-embedded IRC channel I was able to drop libiconv and gettext and thus saving some space. I also decided to drop support for ext2 formatted USB devices since this only complicates things. The long awaited feature to boot directly from the USB device has been added and mostly because of this I decided to make this release version 0.3.0. Changelog: kernel 2.6.11; added support for USB input devices; uclibc upgraded to version 0.9.27; added bind-tools, clamav, iptables; several common Gentoo updates." More details can be found on the distribution's news page.

Helix 1.6

A new version of Helix, a Knoppix-based Linux live CD with tools for forensic analysis, is now available: "Helix 1.6 has been released. This edition has many new improvements and updates. Some of the major changes are a complete rebuild of the 2.6.10 kernel that has support for LVM, Cowloop, SquashFS, SATA, etc. Helix now uses UnionFS to create an overlay file system so you can temporarily write to the CD. Helix now exclusively uses the XFce 4.2 window manager. Many new forensic tools have been added to include a few Stego tools. The hardware detection has been greatly improved with this release and should now 'see' most RAID devices/SATA devices, etc. In addition the drivers for the Intel Centrino G cards (IPW2200) have been added." See the full release announcement and changelog for more information.

YES Linux 2.2.0

YES Linux 2.2.0 has been released: "YES Linux Release Team would like to announce the immediate availability of YES Linux 2.2 Build 0. This is the first build of the YES Linux 2.2 version. This release features more updates to features than to new features such as a new JDK, PHP, Apache, kernel, firewall, and resin. Two of the new features are the inclusion of an Intrusion Detection System - IDS (modsecurity.org) and an anti-spam module integrated into Apache. Also we upgraded the YES Linux Introduction process to now include a step-by-step wizard as well as the one screen advanced step." More details in the release announcement.

ZoneCD 0.6

ZoneCD is a Morphix-based bootable CD with a collection of GNU/Linux software pre-configured to create a WiFi gateway. Version 0.6 has been released with the following changes: "Added USB as configuration medium option; added auto-configuration for Prism II/2 PCI and PCMCIA cards; added firmware and hostap utility for cards with SSF; added auto-reboot dialog configuration; added Samba 3.0.10, xdm 4.3.0, rxvt, poptop (pptpd), ppp, Asterisk, Zaptel 1.0.2; added PPTP passthru to open mode, added cron to [re]start nocat if it crashes; updated DansGuardian to 2.8.0...." Find more details in the release notes.

FoRK 1.0.2.01

FoRK is a Knoppix-based live CD designed for use as a forensic imaging and previewing tool. A new bug-fix version was released today: "The FoRK development team has taken time out from their beta testing of version 1.0.4, in response to demand for the features promised in FoRK 1.0.2 (which was withdrawn when a bug in the network acquisition module was found), to test and release a bugfix version. Version 1.0.2.01 has had the acquisition interface tested in a variety of scenarios to ensure there are no more bugs. Members may download FoRK 1.0.2.01 from the download section." Read the release announcement for more information.

Zen Linux 1.1

Zen Linux 1.1, code name "Shitake" (which, incidentally, means "mushroom" in Japanese), has been released: "Zen Linux v1.1 (Shitake) release is now available. Highlights: UnionFS is now in the initrd phase - it is now possible to apt-get new packages while running via the live CD and all changes made to the live system will be transferred to disk during install. Added the Zen Linux Conversions Framework - it is now possible to convert Core to another 'flavor' such as GNOME or KDE." See the release announcement for further details.

A new version of the AUSTRUMI live CD has been released. From the changelog: "Added inkscape - SVG editor; added gcrontab - a crontab editor for cron system; added xmail - an Internet and intranet mail server; added airsnort, crond, e3, gitmail, gputty, sqlite for PHP; removed gcombust, added simplecdrx; removed tea, added bluefish; removed gps, added htop; updated a lots of programs and libraries; updated kernel (2.6.11)." See the distribution's home page for more information about the new release.

Buffalo Linux 1.7.0

Buffalo Linux 1.7.0 has been released: "The new Buffalo version 1.7.0 is a major upgrade. It includes the latest 2.6.11 kernel (with 2.6.8.1 still included for those not wanting the 'bleeding-edge'), the latest X11 release from X.Org 6.8.2 and over 120 individual package upgrades. Because of the extent of changes no download upgrade is provided. Instead, use the Upgrade script (copy to your hard drive), to move up from a previous Buffalo version. Included in 1.7.0 are updates to AbiWord, Gimp, Sylpheed, and a demo version of Win4Lin, plus many updates to the desktop window manager 'bundle' packages." Read the full release announcement on the project's home page.

A new version of the popular KNOPPIX live CD will be released later this week, during the CeBIT exhibition in Hannover, Germany. That's according to this announcement at Heise.de (in German). The new version will include the latest pre-release kernel 2.6.11, KDE 3.3.2, OpenOffice.org 1.1.4, Firefox and Thunderbird, as well as a new file system - the increasingly popular Unionfs which allows making temporary changes to files on the CD. It is not clear whether this version will be released publicly, but judging by a similar release during last year's CeBIT, we will have to wait for Knoppix 3.9 before we can taste the new features (unless, of course, you will be lucky enough to attend the show).

Fox Linux 0.7

The developers of Fox Linux have announced that version 0.7 will be released within the next two weeks. The new version will resolve some of the reported bugs and missing dependencies, and it will also add new features. Find out more in the announcement, which also includes a handful of screenshots.

Continuing in the one-year old tradition of donating 10% of DistroWatch's income from advertising to various open source project, the February 2005 donation goes to the AbiWord project. This completes our first year of the donation programme, a joint initiative between DistroWatch and LinuxCD.org, which contributes US$50 every month. During the last 12 months we donated a total of US$3,010 to the projects listed below, as well a Tsunami relief fund. Many thanks to our sponsors, especially LinuxCD.org, Xandros Corporation, Turbolinux, MEPIS Linux, Libranet GNU/Linux, LinuxSoft, and many small advertisers who have contributed the funds to run this web site. We hope to continue with the donation programme for many more years in the future!

The AbiWord word processor is one of the best-known open source projects around: "Like most Open Source projects, AbiWord started as a cathedral, but has become more like a bazaar. AbiWord is part of a larger project known as AbiSource, which was started by the SourceGear Corporation. The goal of the project was the development of a cross-platform, Open Source office suite beginning with AbiWord, the project's word processor. SourceGear released the source code to AbiWord and a developer community quickly formed around the project. SourceGear has since then stopped working on the project. The developer community has since then continued to make improvements and increase the quality of AbiWord. Version 1.0 was released in April 2002, followed by Version 2.0 in September 2003."

Despite having been recently relegated to the "extras" in Fedora Core, the fact is that AbiWord remains an important word processor and the only one that supports all major computing platforms available today - Windows, Mac OS, Linux, *BSD and UNIX. And although it does not have some of the more advanced features found in OpenOffice.org, AbiWord will probably satisfy the needs of the vast majority of word processor users, while still maintaining its light-weight status and the ability to run on older computers. As such, we thought that AbiWord was a valuable project worth supporting.

Here is the PayPal receipt for our donation:

This email confirms that you have paid 'cinamod at hotmail.com' $220.00 USD using PayPal.

------------------------------
Payment Details:
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Transaction ID: 4UL82666U3434742T
Total: $220.00 USD
Item Title: Support AbiWord Development
Message: This is a donation by DistroWatch.com as part of our programme to sponsor open source development projects. Keep up the good work :-)

This is the list of projects that received a DistroWatch donation since the launch of the programme:

EzPlanet One Linux. EzPlanet One Linux is a Fedora-based Linux distribution tuned for enterprise solutions. EzPlanet One integrates advanced technologies, flexibility, high availability, security, quality. Built with the enterprise in mind, it features also several tools for the professionals and individual users that make its use more fun. Most of the latest advances in technologies available for Linux have been included in the EzPlanet One distribution. For example it supports most wireless network adapters, including those that do not have specific Linux drivers. EzPlanet One is ready to be used for your server infrastructure and your desktop clients. Quality is the secret of a robust and unbreakable foundation for the technical architect, with the tools and the ease of use to suit system administrators, bank managers, personal assistants, chief financial officers and beginners.

Kate Linux. Kate Linux is a light-weight Linux distribution based on Slackware Linux.

Monoppix. Monoppix is a live CD Linux distribution based on Knoppix. Its main purpose is to showcase and spread the Mono technology, which is a free .NET framework implementation to Linux/UNIX operating systems. The CD includes Mono runtime environment, compiler and class libraries, Mono-enabled Integrated Development Environment, ASP.net web server, MySQL database, and Quickstarts and Mono tutorials.

New on the waiting list

Fantoo. Fantoo is a new, non-commercial Ukrainian distribution based on Gentoo Linux. Its focus is on multimedia applications.

FeniX. FeniX is a new Brazilian desktop Linux distribution and live CD based on Debian GNU/Linux.

GnomeLiveCd. GnomeLiveCD is a Linux distribution with the goal to create a live CD to demonstrate GNOME. The initial impetus was to be able to send a GNOME LiveCD to journalists and news agencies so that they can test and talk about GNOME without installing it, but others have expressed interest as well. Ideally, the infrastructure for this will be flexible, so that it can be trivial to customise and re-target, for example, to distribute a version with a custom splash screen for a specific conference, to change the language for distribution by non-en_US GNOME groups, or to change the software set to market to different groups (artists, developers, etc).

J-Nix. J-Nix is a desktop Linux distribution based on PCLinuxOS with focus on ease of use and designed for novice Linux users.

LG3D LiveCD. LG3D Live CD is a live CD based on Games Knoppix which boots into an experimental snapshot of Sun Microsystem's Project Looking Glass 3D.

QuickLinux. QuickLinux is a new Chinese Linux distribution built from source RPMs for Red Hat Enterprise Linux.

DistroWatch database summary

Number of Linux distributions in the database: 392

Number of BSD distributions in the database: 9

Number of discontinued distributions: 49

Number of distributions on the waiting list: 93

That's all for today. See you all next week!

Ladislav Bodnar

Tip Jar

If you've enjoyed this week's issue of DistroWatch Weekly, please consider sending us a tip.(Tips this week: 0, value: US$0.00)

1 • Centos (by Anonymous on 2005-03-07 13:08:00 GMT from United States)
Didnt see any mention of centos but went thur pretty quickcause gotta go to work. Been running it from the betaand very stable. Got the final but havent had a reason to messwith the beta. Except for the fact that the final is dvd and betais cd (but dont install much so dosent matter). I know most peoplewant bleeding edge but for now centos 4 (aka rhel 4) is as closeas you will get from red hat. But for me the stability part is huge.Downside I do miss the Debian repository. As always you runa great ship Ladi.2 • Real News pushed down by Junk News (by Ariszló on 2005-03-07 13:26:58 GMT from Hungary)
Real news items, like release announcements or third-party reviews, are pushed down by junk news, like Debian Weekly or Ubuntu Traffic. If you don't check DistroWatch in the morning, you will miss some valuable news in the afternoon. Newsletters like Debian Weekly or Ubuntu Traffic definitely deserve a link in their distribution's page, but they are not news of general interest under the Latest News and Updates column.3 • RE: Real News pushed down by Junk News (by ladislav on 2005-03-07 13:40:35 GMT from Taiwan)
OK, what does everybody else think? Should we stop publishing distribution newsletter news on the main page? Or do you want to continue seeing them?4 • total hit counter (by Andrea on 2005-03-07 13:47:09 GMT from Italy)
I'd like to see a total-all distros hit counter, just to know if all the distros togheter are growing or not.

bye5 • About distribution neswletter on the main webpage (by adrian15 on 2005-03-07 14:30:53 GMT from Spain)
I think you should make sections into your rss program in that way that we could sindicate distribution newsletter, distrowatch news, distrowatch distributions news, distrowatch distribution additions and so on.

About having them in main page or not, I think they should be in main webpage because you can know what's happening about the developing of a distro.

That could help people to be involved in these projects.

However for somepeople these could be annoying so I propose you to put a summary of all the newsletters of known distributions once per month.

Just some ideas.

See you, Ladislav.6 • Re: Real News pushed down by Junk News (by Anonymous on 2005-03-07 14:32:37 GMT from United States)
I like having the distibution newsletters linked from the front page - I usually look them up anyway right after checking Distrowatch, so it's very convenient to have them all right there Monday morning.7 • No newsletter announcements (by jim on 2005-03-07 14:48:14 GMT from United States)
[quote]OK, what does everybody else think? Should we stop publishing distribution newsletter news on the main page? Or do you want to continue seeing them?[/quote]

I think you should use your news space for news, not to announce every time a newsletter is published.

But for those who read them, maybe you could put a separate newsletter list off to the side.8 • ndiswrapper donation (by im_ka on 2005-03-07 14:54:15 GMT from Sweden)
thanks for another informative issue of dw.

i would like to propose ndiswrapper to get march's donation (i know it's still some time 'til then, but still)they do a great job making "unsupported" wlan cards work under linux. and they need money to buy new cards.

regards9 • re:No newsletter announcements (by Mofo on 2005-03-07 15:24:08 GMT from United States)
> think you should use your news space for news, not to announce >every time a newsletter is published.

>But for those who read them, maybe you could put a separate >newsletter list off to the side.

Agreed. I like to check them every now and then, but they rarely have anything of vital interest.10 • newsletters (by ray carter on 2005-03-07 15:35:54 GMT from United States)
I'd prefer to see the newsletters summarized in the weekly report - it seems like the report now is mostly a republication of the weeks news - not often anything really new included.

Great choice to support AbiWord - I use it almost exclusively - it's 'lighter' than OO and seems to do better at importing complex formatting in MS Word docs.11 • Filter (by Al on 2005-03-07 15:44:52 GMT from United States)
Maybe a Filter to include newsletters, but have them by default.12 • RE: Real News pushed down by Junk News (by Benedict on 2005-03-07 15:49:23 GMT from Belgium)
I don't agree. I like to see if there is a new newsletter out. Maybe you could make it so that i doesn't take up as much space as it does now. Just a link to the newsletter would be ok.13 • newsletters: (by jackson on 2005-03-07 16:17:35 GMT from United States)
just give newsletters only 2 lines of text and a link to the actual news article, and don't let them count in the news-item limit.14 • RE: newsletters (by DaveW on 2005-03-07 16:35:06 GMT from United States)
I really don't see the difference between the newslettters and the news releases that are the sources for much of DW's content. DW doesn't pretend to have independent journalists ferreting out the news.

What's the damage from including the newsletters? You have to scroll down a few inches further? Doesn't make the slightest sense to me. I suspect somebody just can't see Debian or Gentoo getting the publicity.

Anyway, I guess this kind of sniping is what identifies a great website. Keep it the way it is.15 • Newsletters... (by torque2k on 2005-03-07 16:41:33 GMT from United States)
I agree that Newsletters are important to people, but not so important that they need to push info for distro releases down the list. Maybe it'd be best to put the list of newsletters in the DistroWatch Weekly instead; as someone else said above, they rarely have anything of ultimate importance, though they are usually interesting to read weekly/monthly.16 • newsletters (by Gnobian_Ken00bie on 2005-03-07 17:36:06 GMT from United States)
I certainly enjoy the newsletters, whether or not it's from a distro I use. In fact, I see them as very helpful in this sense: the provide a small window into a distro's community and development style, which can be as important in choosing a distro as its package management or installer.

Was last week's weekly comments unable to receive new postings about mid-week. I tried submitting two as neither ever went up? Is it just me?17 • Don't change a thing!! (by Yoyodyne on 2005-03-07 18:06:10 GMT from United States)
I just wat to say I like distro-watch the way it is. I like see what is going on with upcoming releases and what is going on in the Linux world. Having a quick preview of what is in the newsletter on the main page is good and some people(like me) would never know what it is about unless they saw the preview!!

I think you guys are great! My computer experience and knowledge of linux has increased 10-fold because of your website. I would have never been exposed to so many different distros without this site. You put all of the distros in one place where we all get to try the latest version. It is really Great!!

Which brings me to Vector Linux. I think the best distro out there. Now before I get chewed out all of Linux is great and really personal preferences are what distinguishes the main distros out there. I know that it is based on Slackware and Slackware is the original. With that said I have tried a lot of distros and I do not think that Vector is getting much attention. No it is not a live cd, no it does not have a installer that you can just click and go but it is pretty easy to figure out if I can install it. Why do I like it. How about a ten to fifteen minute install. Once you get it up and running it is fast and stable. It works, for my laptop it just works. So give it a shot along with all of the new distros on distrowatch.18 • news letters (by Anonymous on 2005-03-07 18:48:09 GMT from United States)
junk the weekly news letters, as they are pretty much use less19 • Amarok Live CD (by Robert A. Eiser on 2005-03-07 19:23:30 GMT from United States)
The installer script does not work. Since it's a Perl script was Perl removed to lighten the ISO? Just a thought. Bob Eiser20 • Peanut-12.1 (by Cheapskate on 2005-03-07 19:23:39 GMT from United States)
Linux XP??? lmao

i hope M$FT don't raise a stink about it and give poor little peanut trouble over that...21 • Debian's Stunning New Release Strategy (by GP on 2005-03-07 19:24:48 GMT from Canada)
There was to be a new release strategy when Ben Collins was Debian's leader, what was it, 3 years ago? But nothing could wake up Debian from its verbose lethargy.

So how will things turn out this time really remains to be seen. There's not a lot of meat on the official declaration of intent. It certainly would have been much preferable to deliver both at once. For now, it still looks like hoopla to me.22 • Debian's "Stunning New Release Strategy" (by Bob on 2005-03-07 19:35:37 GMT from United States)
Ummm, you are a bit early for the April 1 issue...23 • Donation Recommendation for next Month..... (by Anonymous on 2005-03-07 19:37:53 GMT from United States)
I suggest hsqldb

which is the database OO is supposed to use...but does not support financially in any way.24 • Ubuntu updates (by William Roddy on 2005-03-07 19:45:59 GMT from United States)
One of my systems is Ubuntu. I've used it more and more. This morning, I awoke to find that there were 68 new upgrades, after having already upgraded it last night. The upgrades include Gnome 2.10 and KDE 3.4 (the new Kubuntu seems to be progressing nicely).

No opinion about where the newsletter should or should not go.

The suggestion about ndiswrapper seems a good one. Ndiswrapper allows me to use a cheap card in my old laptop and I woudn't have wifi, otherwise.

Thank you for your excellent reportages. Continued success, Ladislav.25 • Peanut Linux Wallpaper? (by Groool on 2005-03-07 19:46:26 GMT from Austria)
First thing to say: I dont think distribution newsletter are absolutely necessary, if you want to include them, do it in the weekly report, just keep the main site to releases only

And I have to wonder a bit about Peanut Linux - why the heck do they put the Windows logo in their desktop wallpaper?

a) No serious Linux user wants to see it when using his OS

b) Microshit could come up with some legal troubles26 • Re: Real News pushed down (by Penguin on 2005-03-07 20:23:26 GMT from Finland)
Excuse me but what are the real interesting distro news?

I think that actually the distro newsletters often have the most interesting news stuff. What would be so much more interesting in distro XYZ having a new beta state "release" than reading interesting interviews of developers etc. like is the case with Gentoo newsletters, for example? (and, no, I am not a Gentoo user)

However, Distrowatch might check the newsletters beforehand for interesting news, and if there were none, then leave the newsletter out of DW news (but I guess that that would make many people unhappy too, and would cause extra work too). And, of course, every distro that publishes a proper regular newsletter should have it included in DW news (like is the case too).

The distributions that serve their customers also by publishing regular newsletters deserve the small extra publicity here on Distrowatch news too, IMHO.27 • Peanut Linux Wallpaper (by mikkh on 2005-03-07 21:23:09 GMT from United Kingdom)
Well it's getting coverage for the wrong reasons, and the default desktop was perhaps a poor choice - funny though :o)

Controversial wallpaper aside, Peanut has developed into a nice distro, with some 'interesting' ideas about customisation and a lot of hard work to make it look unique.

Bored of trying a new distro and seeing a bog standard KDE?You won't be with Peanut! Some changes are a bit too extreme for my taste, but I applaud the effort and besides the (in)famous wallpaper, there are lots of others to pick from besides the bog standard choice most distros give.

The enlightenment desktop is either nauseating or way cool, depending on your taste, but I found it too busy and cluttered and hard to read in my usual resolution.

Visuals aside, Peanut is a good fast distro, with some really nice touches. RPM based but it uses apt4RPM for easy updates.

Very slick loading screen and enough variations of eterm and aterm to make your head spin - I settled for thr translucent green one.

Not for the total noob, but it's an easy install if you have any kind of Linux experience, and it's one of the few distros that plays copywrited DVD's straight from the install28 • About newsletters (by Wrawrat on 2005-03-07 21:28:22 GMT from Canada)
Newsletters could be listed in the left column of the front page just like Latest Distributions/Packages. That way, pretty much everybody would be happy. Of course, it would make that column a bit long... At worst, you could add a cookie option to show/hide them.29 • Peanut Linux Wallpaper (by warpengi on 2005-03-07 21:36:39 GMT from Canada)
I got a laugh out of the wallpaper. It certainly made me look!!

If we can't laugh while using Linux then what is the point???30 • Peanut (by jared on 2005-03-07 22:38:04 GMT from United States)
I've always liked Peanut Linux. You've got to admit.. they have got some huge balls to flash MS all over the Desktop and have copywrited DVD's play out of box.31 • Newsletters (by Dave Thacker on 2005-03-07 22:39:58 GMT from United States)
I like the newsletters just the way they are done now. Thanks for you hard work, Ladislav.32 • SymphonyOS (by Leth on 2005-03-07 22:50:52 GMT from United States)
Ladislav, I just though I'd give you an update on SymphonyOS, as well as any other interested parties.

Currently, we are quickly approaching Alpha 3. After finishing that milestone, we will begin public beta-testing. Althouhg a definate time has not been set, I would estimate around May.

Our desktop refining is quickly becoming more defined; Ryan has the toolbar fully customised, and proper icons and graphics to beautify it should be coming in time.

A faire amount of people are hard at work, and we hope you stop by sometime.

Alex

---www.symphonyos.com---33 • Re real news (by Anonymous on 2005-03-07 23:03:41 GMT from United States)
Keep em the way they are and where they areWould like to see some index for number of downloadson your page. Both bittorrent and ftp. Seems likethe only way to know where people are going.34 • amaroK LiveCD Installer (by Greg on 2005-03-07 23:27:25 GMT from United States)
Thanks for leaving that comment Bob. The installer requires perl-QT, which was inadvertently removed when slimming down the CD. I will add it back for the 1.2.2 release, and perhaps make a 1.2.1a available for anybody that might want to install it.35 • Peanut (by Anonymous Penguin on 2005-03-07 23:30:35 GMT from Italy)
I find it very good looking (yes! I don't mind the Linux XP Professional joke) and very fast, but I find the hardware detection and configuration an absolute pain: after trying Kanotix 2005-01 that is almost unbearable. I hope they do something about it.36 • Re: real news (by PP on 2005-03-07 23:43:42 GMT from United Kingdom)
Newsletters don't bother me, but...

.. are you going to include newsletters of all distros?

If not, why favoritism?

Maybe the best coherent long run strategy is to not post them. But they definately should be linked in the DW Weekly (which is my favourite web journal, thanks!)

Best!PP37 • Newsletters (by ShakaZ on 2005-03-07 23:48:43 GMT from Belgium)
It's true that these newsletters announcements do sometimes take too much space up & probably don't interest the majority as people who realy are interested in a particular one probably already bookmarked it. Yet sometimes there's a usefull info showing up & for some it's indispensable, so here are my little suggestions : place the newsletters info in a box on the left & remove the latest distros box. A more modern solution would be a dynamic page of course or even better a customisable page!!! A little bit harder to implement but the benefits of it would be tremendous. Less traffic for the server & the clients since only information of interest would have to be transmitted. One could for instance only want fresh information on systems based on debian , based on a particular language, having multimedia capabilities, etc... or any combination of these. This is just an ideal of course, i'll be quite happy already whith the sortable table when it'll completed38 • newsletters (by vampire_janus on 2005-03-08 00:57:03 GMT from Philippines)
i agree that the newletters are not of interest to the majority. put it somewhere else or do something about it (ie a customisable page).39 • Was a poll taken? (by Gnobian_Ken00bie on 2005-03-08 01:41:07 GMT from United States)
ShakaZ said "probably don't interest" - and offerred some interesting proposals - then vampire janus dropped the "probably". But we ought to be careful letting this suspicion turn into an assumption.

But in any case, who says that news must be of interest to the majority? I suspect quite a few people may not be interested in news about Hikarunix, for example - unless they play Go or happen simply to be curious about any and all developments in GNU/Linux or *BSD - or maybe just Damnsmalllinux derivatives. Perhaps the key is to make news available to a lot of different minorities. After all, if this site were just about what interests the majority - well, it would cover Micro$oft exclusively!

I really don't see what the problem is here. I don't use Gentoo, but I was curious about the newsletter and ended up finding it quite interesting - perhaps offerring more reasons to give it a try. But even if it didn't interest me at all, I don't see that it causes me any inconvenience to see it there.

If your favorite distro has a newsletter that's not getting coverage, I am certain Ladislav would appreciate hearing about it. And if not and because of that you feel your distro is getting short-shrift, well there's a simple answer: get the ball rolling to start one! You might start with something as basic as a summary of the week's postings to your fave distros forums. Enlist other users.

This is a big part of what using Free software is all about. You don't have to know C to make a contribution.40 • Suggestions to Distro Newsletter (by William Ng on 2005-03-08 02:01:37 GMT from Hong Kong)
Maybe we can take a look at http://www.linuxcompatible.org/

Their new way of summarizing updated packages in every distro is neat and tidy, and it does not block other news item that interest more people.41 • Debian's "Stunning New Release Strategy (by Ed Borasky on 2005-03-08 04:11:34 GMT from United States)
Two words: **code cutoff**42 • Newsletter (by Brian P. at 2005-03-08 04:28:59 GMT from United States)
I really enjoy your newsletter. Thanks for the hard work ladislav. I read your articles for lwn.net and enjoy them as well!!!43 • European Council Presidency Adopts Software Patent Agreement Against Council's R (by Alan Moser on 2005-03-08 05:52:13 GMT from United States)
I know that this is a little off comment, but it must be shared with the readers of Distrowatch.It is a shame that the EU did go with this. This will hinder much of Free/Open source development mostly because alot of the FOSS developers come from Europe. This is most certainly a slap in the face for the Open Source community. I urge that anyone in Europe who reads this, please write, call, protest, etc.. to keep this from completely going through. The FOSS community needs your help again, please do not stand down from this challenge. THIS IS A CALL TO ARMS, THIS MUST BE STOPED NOW OR LINUX WILL DIE.

~Alan44 • Clarification (by Ariszló on 2005-03-08 07:49:55 GMT from Hungary)
What annoys me is not the mere appearance of newsletters under Latest News and Updates but the fast disappearance of real news items that do not reappear every week. If you miss a newsletter this week, you will be able to read it later because you will know where to find it but if you miss the announcement of a new release of Yggdrasil Linux, you won't even know what you have missed.45 • Re: European Council (by Ariszló on 2005-03-08 07:51:54 GMT from Hungary)
Yes, time for protest.46 • RE: Clarification (by ladislav on 2005-03-08 08:54:37 GMT from Taiwan)if you miss the announcement of a new release of Yggdrasil Linux, you won't even know what you have missed.

All releases for the past week are presented again in DistroWatch Weekly every week. Since you are always around this page, I assumed that you actually read it - or am I mistaken?47 • distro new newsletter reports (by John Coombes on 2005-03-08 09:28:12 GMT from Australia)
IMHO they should not be reported on the main page, as has been happing recently. I find them rather distracting from what some would consider "real new" - yes I know, what is the definition of "real new" and also to whom ?

I think it is a good service to provide each day, coverage about the latest new newsletter report for various distros (as most people are not on multiple distros mailing lists) and it can be a time saver for people. So it has its uses.

For me the "distro new newsletter reports" should be not be included as a main page item but made only avaiable as a seperate sub-menu. Certainly would be more usefull for me, making my (almost) dayly browse of the main page far easyer/quicker. Then when I want I could have a look at some distro newsletter reports. It not quite the same, but its a bit like, if that day I am interested in compairing just "LiveCD".

Anyhow thats my 2 cents worth. A big thanks to Lav & Co for DWhappy days48 • re:Debian's Stunning New Release Strategy (by Mofo on 2005-03-08 12:34:20 GMT from United States)
You know, I'm torn on debian's release strategy. There seem to be two strategies to keeping a strong and secure distribution: stick with a bunch of code and fix every bug you find, no matter how long it takes; or stay on top of updates and don't let your software fall too far behind. It's quite a cunundrum. Having run fedora a few times, and having my install ruined within minutes by updating my system, I can see why the debian folks are hesitant to release. But, with the fast pace of open software development, it seems folly to let your distro lag behind. In the end, I don't mind debian's release strategy, as long as they maintain a relatively up-to-date testing and unstable directory. The open source community has adapted with a large number of debian-based distros, most of which are high quality. Because of debian's glacial release strategy, the community has more variety.

PS. I also enjoy abiword. Thanks, lad49 • re: newsletters (by momo on 2005-03-08 12:59:14 GMT from United Kingdom)
I agree that newsletters are largely irelevant to most folks except the particular distro-users concerned. Given 100+distros, they could be relevant to a tiny percentage at a given time.SOLUTION - a single-line link to newsletter releases, smallish fontsize. Nothing else but "XXXXX newsletter is out "

eg___________________________GENTOO NEW RELEASEblah gentoo has released a new version of 2005.1.2.4.4.xxbugfixes are xxxxxxxxxx. chroot blah. 3 hour build. uber-geekness stage1 blah. Optimised for typo-traps blah. Blah blah get it here XXX sizeXXXmb.-----------------------------------------------DEBIAN hasn't released anything for years blah, no change there blah , but it's actually quite good blah, just not very marketable, blah. isos _arent_ available blah, but unofficially they are _here_ confusing.-blah -----------------------------------------------Ubuntu newsletter is out again, -----------------------------------------------BEATRIX 2005.1 has been released for beta testing. fixed hd-install blah, temple cats, cheap Prague beer, pretty cats blah get it here XXXX size XXXmb. prrrr.50 • RE: Newsletters (by ladislav on 2005-03-08 14:01:27 GMT from Taiwan)
I've counted the comments about the inclusion of distribution newsletters in the main news and it's about 50:50. I am starting to incline towards having the newsletters published on the sidebar, perhaps just above the "Latest Packages" box. Anybody has any objections?

As for the "relevance" of the news, this is not particularly easy to judge. As an example, we had a first test release of Kubuntu last week. This release generated quite a bit of buzz on some of the forums and blogs I frequent, in many parts of the world. Yet, the news was not published on any of the major Linux news sites, maybe because they thought that the news wasn't very interesting or relevant. They were wrong.51 • NEWSLETTERS (by Jari on 2005-03-08 14:31:48 GMT from Finland)
I can understand why some may not be intereste din Newsletters, but then again they are invaluable for those that read them.

COMPROMISE

Juste mention in distronews weekly that "New newsletters this week: XXX, YYY, ZZZ" and just offer link to the newsletters.

That would be great for all - those interested can go and read more and other can continue to read the weekly edition.

SUGGESTION

I concur with the person who said that Distributions that publish newsletershould all be included. That would also give a signal to those who are evaluating distrubutions that:

a) there is community for this distrob) it is being maintained

In the long run nobody cares about distributions that come and go. Newsletters would also help to keep on eye on "potential" new comers.52 • Blah Blah (by Marc on 2005-03-08 14:46:37 GMT from Canada)
About Peanut ....You know what they say, talk bad, talk good butTALK ABOUT ME !!!

About DistroNews ...No problem Ladislav, i go for the sidebar.

About DistroDataBase ...Like to have an "installable in which language" criteria.

Keep up the good work. and thanks.53 • search feature (by MarkV on 2005-03-08 16:22:48 GMT from United States)
Ladislav:a great site, thanks.we do computer recycling which usually means send it to the grinder.. since most e-waste is haz-mat. But, we do actually recycle some computers.. old Mac's have tended to be the most reliable and in better shape. So.... a search by processor would be helpful. For us knowing who supports PPC is important. Also, don't how this could be done but a search for small footprint distro for older hardware would also be helpful to a lot of folks who install linux on a second machine or to keep a older hardware useful..Thanksmark54 • RE: Blah Blah (by Anonymous Penguin on 2005-03-08 16:30:14 GMT from Italy)
"About Peanut ....You know what they say, talk bad, talk good butTALK ABOUT ME !!!"

Of course! If you talk about something it is because you found something good about it. If you found it utter rubbish you won't even bother.55 • Re: Newsletters (by Ariszló on 2005-03-08 16:30:30 GMT from Hungary)I am starting to incline towards having the newsletters published on the sidebar, perhaps just above the "Latest Packages" box.

I find it a very good solution. People who are interested in reading the newsletters will find the links to them and release announcement will stay long enough under Latest News and Updates. Thanks for your efforts to please all kinds of your visitors. :)

As for Kubuntu, I agree. Adding KDE to Ubuntu is news.56 • http://www.gobie.net/ (by Anonymous on 2005-03-08 20:36:14 GMT from Norway)
What happened?? would be nice if bsd had that as an option so newbies can use openbsd.. I tried it before I tried linux so it`s possible to install openbsd, but if it had the graphical installation .. I might have been running it all this time57 • 2012 is also "after the weekend" (by GP on 2005-03-08 20:50:52 GMT from Canada)
Distrowatch has enlightened... err, one of our days by posting the following declaration of a Debian developper who's apparently involved in the release project:

"More (much more) information will be available after the weekend, when we'll be able to present our Stunning New Release Strategy to the rest of the project."

Debian Weekly News has come out today, and no further news on the matter. Aren't we already «after the weekend»? Will this be ready when it's ready too? Because 2012 is also "after the weekend".

Anyway, who would want a Debian-patched 2.6...8! kernel in a «new version» when the next one will be years in the making?

This promise is like a drunkard pretending he's gonna run against a marathon man.

Don't let Google wreck the net.59 • Weekly NewsLetters and Blah Blah and Kubuntu (by Antonio on 2005-03-08 23:39:52 GMT from United States)
Ladislav, I have seen the 50-50 debate of whether to include the News or not for each distro. I think that I agree with you, you can put it in the sidebar with the new distributions, new packages, weekly newsletters. While I don't mind reading the newsletters from different distros that I don't use, I find it very enlightining and I get different viewpoints and different perspectives with things that are different for each distro. For instance the new unionfs, and squashfs, verses ovlfs, busybox, cloop??, and most of the stuff associated with making of live cd's. I have not been successful building a live cd on my own. I read your introduction to making live cd, the one with Mandrake based/rpm based and the one with Debian. I have tried mklivecd with Mandrake 9.2 and Mandrake 10.0, and linux-live scripts also with Mandrake 9.2, 10.0 and Fedora Core 2 and Fedora Core 3. I have not succeeded in making my very own live cd. But I do get different perspectives as to differences and simililarites between the linux distributions. /usr/src/linux vs /lib/modules/2.6.X./build deb vs rpm, yum, apt, compiling from source .tar.gz, .bz2, etc, kde vs gnome vs xfce vs blackbox. I have not compiled a kernel on my own and I need to do it so that I can make my own live cd with my own configuration.

Ladislav, you do a fine job. You cannot satisfy all the people all the time so don't worry about that. Most distros produce very informative newsletters. Let the readers decide. Cheers. Proud Linux user.60 • Kubuntu and the newsletters, Live CD's (by Antonio on 2005-03-08 23:48:35 GMT from United States)
I went offsides or out of the ball park with my comments. Kubuntu is coming off nicely. Not everyone likes Gnome, so they want Ubuntu with KDE. Personally why not have the best of both worlds. For me both KDE and Gnome are fine desktops with Xfce not falling too much behind. Most of the software is excellent and works great. It is not right to say things like Ubuntu's Gnome is better than Fedora's Gnome. It is still Gnome and you can modify like you want to. Just play around and keep learning. One of the main differences is where they place the stuff or configure things. Not everyone agrees with these things so they won't agree/acknowledge that Ubuntu is coming on very strong threatening to displace Fedora/Mandrake for the top spot on distrowatch. And they will make a stronger point with Kubuntu. Bringing in the people that did not like Ubuntu because it used Gnome by customizing a version with KDE. Cheers everyone. Newsletters on the side is cool. A Special section dedicated to LiveCD's and their purpose how they can help the user.61 • RE: Newsletters (by ladislav on 2005-03-09 01:33:16 GMT from Taiwan)
OK, all new newsletters will now be linked from the left sidebar, from a box called "Latest Newsletters". You will have to scroll down a bit to see the box (sorry, we have too many advertisers at the moment). I've also added another box just beneath it - the latest reviews of distributions. Some of the best reviews will still make it into the main news, but most reviews will just be linked from the "Latest Reviews" box. If you want RSS feeds for these two boxes, please let me know.

By the way, we made a new record - the hightest number of page views on the main index page of DistroWatch. It was viewed 79,392 times yesterday, beating the previews record from September last year by about 1,100 views.62 • How? (by Alex on 2005-03-09 04:03:52 GMT from United States)
How would you judge which are the "best" reviews? How will you decide what makes it on the front page or not?

To be fair, I think all reviews should be listed there.63 • Newsletters Interest (by drs on 2005-03-09 04:51:10 GMT from United States)
One of the reasons that I visit DW more now than I use to do is that I can get a lot of distro info in one place. The same may be true for others. I like following all the hapenings for the Debian family of distros. Seeing when the various newsletters come out is helpful to me. I do not know what to say to the people who feel it sometimes makes them scroll farther to see what they are interesting in. I personally do not mind scrolling past what they are interested in.To sum up: DistroWatch does a great job and thanks.64 • Great idea, Ladislav (by Steven Watsky on 2005-03-09 11:23:51 GMT from Czech Republic)
Ladislav,

I think your idea of a sidebar for news is wonderful, well, news. Because of the frequency of releases, distros, for instance, Kanotix, might get bumped off the page by the time someone gets to the page. Even though it was released on that day, it's already gone from the front page by the time some people get there. The newsletters suffer the same fate.

In other words, I think it's the best of both worlds; both distros and newsletters at this point are getting bumped by each other. Splitting them should satisify both crowds.

Good idea!

Steven65 • rss query (by adrian15 on 2005-03-10 11:22:17 GMT from Spain)
Some of the best reviews will still make it into the main news, but most reviews will just be linked from the "Latest Reviews" box. If you want RSS feeds for these two boxes, please let me know.

I'm not interested in having rss from Latest Newsletter but from Latest Reviews. However I might be interested in a future about the 2 rss.

I don't know about the other distrowatchers but I vote for having 2 rss.

See you, Ladislav.66 • Distrowatch Weekly rss (by adrian15 on 2005-03-10 11:27:13 GMT from Spain)
I just forgot about commenting about it again.I'm just interested in Distrowatch Weekly news rss. I know that I could just check eache week my Distrowatch news and find the Distrowatch Weekly but I prefer to have them in my rss program.

Does anyone more think that having a separate rss for Distrowatch weekly is a good idea?